Study Shows Americans Spend More on Fast Food Than Fighting Hunger

A new survey shows that Americans spend nearly 50 times as much money on fast food as they do helping children in poverty.

The survey conducted by the Barna Research Group and sponsored by Compassion International found that typical respondents reported spending about $240 a year on fast food, while a typical household spends only $5 a year on assistance to poor children. Compassion International president Dr. Wesley Stafford says the survey's results are disappointing.

“I wish I could say, 'not me, not guilty,' but I suppose the other side of the equation, the part that is so sad, is that nearly 60% aren't sure that [addressing poverty] is really their responsibility,” he says.

The survey also shows that half of the households polled said in the last year they had donated nothing to causes or organizations that assist the poor.

Stafford says the study indicates that Americans need more understanding of the nature of poverty. And he laments how attitudes toward caring for the poor have changed over the past few generations.

“For many years,” he says, “we were all there for each other. We built each others' barns as we came across the prairie. And when the depression came, whenever somebody came to a farmhouse and offered to chop wood for supper, you know, we did that.”

But Stafford says times have changed, and so have American attitudes toward charity. “After World War II, we basically turned that over to the government. We said, 'Government, you take care of the poor among us and take it out of my taxes,'” he says.

Compassion International is one of the nation's largest Christian child development organizations. Since the early 1950s, its child sponsorship-based ministry has grown to include a worldwide staff that provides Christ-centered aid to more than 500,000 children in more than 20 countries in Middle America, Asia, Africa, and South America.

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